I am a registered investment advisor based in Houston Texas, specializing in equity options. My focus is naked put selling and spread trading. I have past experience in commercial banking, real estate, and oil and gas, as well as various types of other derivative investments. My world was turned upside down by the financial crisis of 2008-9. Many of my views are slanted to expose and correct the corruptions existing in the world’s financial markets. I have a BS in economics from UC Berkeley and an MBA in finance from the U of Pennsylvania Wharton School. Reach me at rbf10@comcast.net

Why Romney Lost And Republicans Keep Losing

One would have thought Mitt Romney would have cruised to a landslide victory this Tuesday past. No president had been elected with such abysmal employment numbers since FDR won in 1936. I can’t think of any president in my lifetime that has fomented greater division among the populace, spurring class warfare and widening racial divisions. Even though one of the greatest of rhetoricians, a silver tongued chameleon brilliantly malleable to weave his messages to whatever the crowd genre, it still hasn’t sunk in that he pulled off this victory. The political axiom is elections are about “jobs, the economy, jobs, and the economy.” Has anything so drastically changed to alter this equation?

Let’s travel back over the four recessions prior to the 2008-09 downturn and measure the time it took to get back to pre-recession employment levels. Courtesy of a chart prepared by J P Morgan here are some interesting statistics. The recession of 1974-76 only took 20 months to return to pre-downturn employment levels. The 1981-82 recession returned 26 months later while the 1990-91 slump fully rebounded after 32 months and the decline of 2001 recovered in 47 months. But here we are in the final months of 2012 fully 58 months after 2008-09 was officially declared a recession in December of 2007 and we are still 2.7% above pre-recession employment levels and you can’t even see any peephole of light in the tunnel. Compounding the anemia is that the “employee participation rate” is at 63.6%. Until this current malaise, from 1990 onward there was never a time when it sank below 66% and there were numerous years where the average participation rate exceeded 67%. If you “normalize” this rate at 66.5% then it would add over 4.5 million souls to the jobless rolls. It also increases the unemployment rate by 3 full percentage points.

A set of facts like these adumbrate a Romney victory. So something else must have been at work……something that made perhaps millions of voters flee. It was an election of two different business models: The Obama statist/socialist versus the smaller government capitalist ideals of Romney. I enthusiastically pulled the Romney-Ryan lever and felt confident in victory.

What Happened

The GOP has the look and feel of a theocracy. The evangelical movement has co-opted the Republican Party and given it a veneer of intolerance. It is wonderful to have strong religious beliefs, just keep them to yourself. America is a secular nation and separation of church and state is enshrined in our Constitution. That said, America is, contrary to what the president proclaims, a Christian country. From my perspective this translates that our government is founded on and our laws constructed on the Judeo-Christian ethic grounded in the Ten Commandments. It implies a tolerance and embrace for people of different cultures and different religious beliefs. When I hear a controversy about whether or not the Ten Commandments can be posted in a school or outside of some state capital building I think the point is being missed. These “laws” should be viewed as a secular gesture of what binds Americans together. However religious or agnostic one is, in addition to any religious symbolism you care to attach, the Ten Commandments is a signpost of our American culture. “In God We Trust” on our currency is not a religious endorsement but a reminder that God and the secular are not mutually exclusive. There is however a “tipping point”, a place where the religious tends to crowd out the secular and to me crosses the divide of separation of church and state.

Each speech, Republican candidates often competed for most religious, most “family values”, most pro-life. The definition of conservative has shifted from running a responsible government with a balanced budget to how many days a week you punched your attendance ticket at church. It borders on zealotry. If your credentials on abortion don’t go back at least five generations, you might be branded an apostate. In the Republican senate primary in Texas Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst was upset by Tea Party favorite Ted Cruz. The battle was nasty and it all boiled down that Cruz was able paint Dewhurst as an establishment moderate. The evangelical movement is inflexible on the wrong issues. It is clear their votes indispensable to any successful Republican white house bid. The best way to promote “family values” is to fix the economy so more jobs are created so people have enough money to raise their families properly. Who goes to what church and how often is a measure of nothing.

Where is the party for the moderate Republican like myself? I am guided by issues like the “fiscal cliff” and how much my taxes are going up. Foreign policy is important, but at the end of the day, secondary. I don’t want to hear the word abortion ever on a campaign trail. I have three daughters so I cringe when Neanderthals like Missouri senate candidate Todd Akin are making claims that women don’t get pregnant during “legitimate” rape, whatever that means. One would think these wing nuts might have gained a smidgeon of wisdom from that example of idiocy, but sure enough Indiana senate hopeful Richard Mourdock went off and announced that pregnancy from rape must be “something God intended”. How bizarre to contemplate such a fatuous insensate guy legislating on our behalf. This medieval retrograde thinking has no place in our political dialogue….And don’t you know other Republican candidates expend massive energy to escape being painted with the same brush.

Given the demographic leftward shift of our country, sand is rapidly coursing through the hourglass for the GOP. Evangelicals must reduce their intransigence on abortion and gays. I know a couple of gays who actually cast their ballot for Romney. They held their noses and did it. Job creation and fiscal issues won out over some pretty rabidly anti-gay rhetoric…..neither had even one gay friend that voted Republican. Conversely, I listened to dinner table talk as women discuss abortion as if the election were a referendum for this single issue. Jobs or taxes were tertiary compared to the concept of losing control over basic rights over their own bodies. For so many women “choice” is the sine qua non in a government. How many hundreds of thousands or millions of women would change their vote over this one issue? Why can’t the platform be modified to say “we don’t agree with abortion, we think it is wrong but we are TOLERANT and will allow choice for women”, and then do something similar on gay rights. If the GOP wants to ever grace the presidential winners circle again, I just told them how to do it.

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One thing I’d argue in response to your comment about Obama’s divisiveness is that the symbolism of Reagan opening his campaign miles from the Mississippi Civil Rights killing is far more divisive. It’s just that America was in a different time and place back then. Many people found his rhetoric and actions quite divisive but not the majority in 1980/1984.

For women, this election was about many different issues, not just abortion rights and Roe v Wade. However, you seem not to understand how this issue has held control over the Republican Party since about 1980, including control of its evolution, and what Roe v Wade and Planned Parenthood v Casey really mean to intelligent, educated women.

After the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act became law under a supportive Democratic administration, many Southern Democrats abandoned the Democrats, and most African Americans became especially loyal Democrats, while Republicans welcomes the ex-Southern Democrats into their ranks. The second-wave feminist movement and pro-choice movement were not that identified with a single party, but Ford was anti-choice, Carter was pro-choice despite his lack of comfort with that position, and Reagan was anti-choice. Moreover, the Democrats were more favorable to an ERA than Republicans, and various women who were spokespeople of the anti-choice movement and anti-feminist movement were Republicans.

Reagan won in 1980 partly because the Christian Coalition, the center of the anti-choice movement and support for “family” values, supported his anti-choice stand, but also because so many independents and centrist Democrats excused Reagan, saying, he won’t really harm women’s rights, overturn Roe v Wade, privatize Social Security, etc. Bush, Sr., had been pro-choice, and many thought he only changed after being asked to be the VP candidate so that he could run for VP.

After Reagan/Bush, Sr., were elected, the Christian Coalition basically blackmailed the RNC, saying, if you only run anti-abortion candidates and have a strong anti-abortion plank in your party platform, we’ll deliver the votes for you, but if you don’t, the anti-abortion social conservatives will back a third party. And the RNC was afraid and sold its soul to the Christian Coalition.

Reagan went on to choose such nominees for the Supreme Court as Bork and Thomas, and Bush, Sr., had to support the social conservatives who had supported him. Thus, the Republican Party was on its way to being, basically, the anti-abortion party.

In 1992, the Supreme Court was only one appointment of a justice away from tipping the balance so that Roe v Wade could be overturned. The many pro-choice Republicans were already sick of the arrangement with the anti-abortion movement. Pro-choice Republican Ross Perot ran as a pro-choice independent candidate with right-of-center economic concerns, while Clinton ran as a pro-choice Democrat. But the outcome was that Perot mainly took votes away from Bush with his 16% support, and Clinton was elected. Pro-choice women were ecstatic: this was the first election in which the female vote had clearly been the deciding force. A repeat would come when anti-choice Dole challenged pro-choice Clinton.

If I remember correctly, it was at the 1996? Republican National Convention that the anti-abortion forces actually prevented two prominent pro-choice Republican governors, Pete Wilson of CA and George Pataki of NY from speaking. Thus, the selling out of the GOP resulted in silencing free speech on the issue of abortion rights within its own party.

Pro-life Bush, Jr., did not win the popular vote in the 2000 election against pro-choice Gore. Actually, when the Florida votes were recounted, long after the Supreme Court decision that Florida Governor Bush had the right to refuse a recount, they actually favored Gore. But Bush, Jr., had managed to win not just by a tactic aimed at getting the electoral college vote: he had carefully avoided strong anti-choice rhetoric, saying, “Roe v Wade is the law of the land,” so “We have to create a culture of life.” He continued this tack in 2004. Even though pro-choice women tended Democratic, some could vote for Bush, because, as with Reagan, some did not believe he would harm Roe v Wade.

Now, McCain was a rape-exception Republican, and he chose Palin, someone who was against abortion rights even in a case of rape, as his VP candidate for 2008. And once again, Roe v Wade was within the grasp of those who wanted to overturn it. But women, and single women, in particular supported pro-choice Obama and Biden overwhelmingly, as did many pro-choice men.

At the 2010 mid-term elections, Republicans, knowing how unpopular the anti-abortion position was, ran all over the states saying they were only interested in jobs, the economy, and the debt. This got them votes from fiscal conservatives. But the crop of Republicans that resulted began their term in 2011 not with job or debt or economy bills, but with anti-abortion bills. And in a little over a year, they introduced over 1,100 federal and state anti-abortion bills across the nation. Then, those who voted for them understood what they really cared about.

Across the years from Bush, Sr., to 2012, the Republican Party has been bleeding membership. I saw on some news talk show that a poll was done this last summer before the conventions to find out the populational proportions of registered Dems, Reps, and Independents, and these numbers were compared to earlier ones going back about two decades or more. In that poll, the numbers of Dems and Independents were almost the same, and the number of Republicans was considerably lower.

Romney actually had no coherent position. He said publicly that he would happily sign into law a personhood amendment for zygotes like the one Mississippi voted down in 2011. He said he only supported exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the woman. He said he would get rid of Roe v Wade. He said the issue should go back to the states. Then later said he supported them for rape, incest, and the health and life of the woman, only to be “corrected” by a spokesperson the next day who said he did not support an exception for the health of the woman. And meanwhile, he chose as his running mate Paul “rape is a method of conception” Ryan, who doesn’t believe in exceptions and co-sponsored a federal “human life” bill for personhood for zygotes with Todd “legitimate rape” Akin.

Akin, Mourdock, Smith, Walsh, and various other Congressional GOP candidates made unbelievably ignorant and stupid remarks about rape pregnancy and “there is no such thing as abortion to save the life of the woman,” etc. Why? Because all the anti-abortion people are out of the closet now, saying exactly what they believe in public. The blackmailers of the GOP unchained.

Obama won with overwhelming support from single women, and Akin, Mourdock, Smith, Walsh, and all sort of other anti-abortion candidates have been defeated.

The GOP, you see, created its own problem when it sold its soul. The reason so many GOPers are anti-abortion is because so many pro-choice Republicans just left, a few at a time. The more the blackmailers were unchained, the more extreme their views were found to be, until it was really hard for pro-choice Republicans to go on being Republicans. The GOP can still take some state legislatures, and from there they can gerrymander districts to win House seats, but they cannot win the Senate any more, and the presidency is firmly beyond their reach. Because the blackmailers who took over the party have alienated even decent Republicans, who have to hold their noses to vote for them.

Now, Roe v Wade and Planned Parenthood v Casey contain sections that eloquently state some reasons that the right to choose whether to continue or terminate a pregnancy is a fundamental right – even for those who think that the right to privacy is not the appropriate way to defend it. The truth is that no born person has a right to do to another what blastocysts, embryos, and fetuses do to the women who are pregnant with them, so even personhood for zygotes will never justify using human laws and the police violence that unpins their enforcement to force women to continue pregnancies. One simply has the right to prevent others from controlling their sex organs and immune systems against one’s will, conscience, and freedom of religion, and we all know it except rapists.

What can the GOP do? I said above that Dems and Independents have about the same proportion of the population and Republicans have a lower proportion now. So the sane Republicans should either kick the blackmailing anti-abortion people out of the party or, if they can’t because they’re no longer a majority there, they should walk out on the party and start a third party and call themselves something like “Independent Republicans.”

Frankly, I’d love to see pro-choice Republicans show the guts to do that, and they might well draw a huge percentage of Independents into their new gestalt. But fessing up to what happened over the last 30 years is a necessary precursor to repudiation of the conservative tyranny over female sex organs that has been shamelessly promulgated.

For women, this election was about many different issues, not just abortion rights and Roe v Wade. However, you seem not to understand how this issue has held control over the Republican Party since about 1980, including control of its evolution, and what Roe v Wade and Planned Parenthood v Casey really mean to intelligent, educated women.

After the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act became law under a supportive Democratic administration, many Southern Democrats abandoned the Democrats, and most African Americans became especially loyal Democrats, while Republicans welcomed the ex-Southern Democrats into their ranks. The second-wave feminist movement and pro-choice movement were not that identified with a single party, but Ford was anti-choice, Carter was pro-choice despite his lack of comfort with that position, and Reagan was anti-choice. Moreover, the Democrats were more favorable to an ERA than Republicans, and various women who were spokespeople of the anti-choice movement and anti-feminist movement were Republicans. This helped many supporters of the women’s liberation movement to identify with the Democratic Party.

Reagan won in 1980 partly because the Christian Coalition, the center of the anti-choice movement and support for “family” (as opposed to individual) values, supported his anti-choice stand. However, many independents and centrist Democrats also excused Reagan, saying, he won’t really harm women’s rights, overturn Roe v Wade, privatize Social Security, etc. Bush, Sr., had been pro-choice, and many thought he only changed after being told he had to if he wanted to be the VP candidate.

After Reagan/Bush, Sr., were elected, the Christian Coalition basically blackmailed the RNC, saying, if you only run anti-abortion candidates and have a strong anti-abortion plank in your party platform, we’ll deliver the votes for you, but if you don’t, the anti-abortion social conservatives will back a third party. And the RNC was afraid and sold its soul to the Christian Coalition.

Reagan went on to choose such nominees for the Supreme Court as Bork and Thomas, and Bush, Sr., had to support the social conservatives who had supported him. Thus, the Republican Party was on its way to being, basically, the anti-abortion party.

In 1992, the Supreme Court was only one justice appointment away from tipping the balance so that Roe v Wade could be overturned. The many pro-choice Republicans were already sick of the arrangement with the anti-abortion movement. Pro-choice Republican Ross Perot ran as a pro-choice independent candidate with right-of-center economic concerns, while Clinton ran as a pro-choice Democrat. But the outcome was that Perot mainly took votes away from Bush with his 16% support, so Clinton was elected and Roe v Wade was saved. Pro-choice women were ecstatic: this was the first election in which the female vote had clearly been the deciding force. A repeat would come when anti-choice Dole challenged pro-choice Clinton.

If I remember correctly, it was at the 1996? Republican National Convention that the anti-abortion forces actually prevented two prominent pro-choice Republican governors, Pete Wilson of CA and George Pataki of NY from speaking. Thus, the selling out of the GOP resulted in silencing free speech on the issue of abortion rights within its own party.

Pro-life Bush, Jr., did not win the popular vote in the 2000 election against pro-choice Gore. Actually, when the Florida votes were recounted, long after the Supreme Court decision that Florida Governor Bush had the right to refuse a recount, they actually favored Gore. But Bush, Jr., had managed to win not just by a tactic aimed at getting the electoral college vote: he had carefully avoided strong anti-choice rhetoric, saying, “Roe v Wade is the law of the land,” so “We have to create a culture of life.” He continued this tack in 2004. Even though pro-choice women tended Democratic, some could vote for Bush, because, as with Reagan, some did not believe he would harm Roe v Wade.

Now, McCain was a rape-exception Republican, and he chose Palin, someone who was against abortion rights even in a case of rape, as his VP candidate for 2008. And once again, Roe v Wade was within the grasp of those who wanted to overturn it. But women, and single women, in particular supported pro-choice Obama and Biden overwhelmingly, as did many pro-choice men.

At the 2010 mid-term elections, Republicans, knowing how unpopular the anti-abortion position was, ran all over the states saying they were only interested in jobs, the economy, and the debt. This got them votes from fiscal conservatives. But the crop of Republicans that resulted began their term in 2011 not with job or debt or economy bills, but with anti-abortion bills. And in a little over a year, they introduced over 1,100 federal and state anti-abortion bills across the nation. Then, those who voted for them understood what they really cared about.

Across the years from Bush, Sr., to 2012, the Republican Party has been bleeding membership. I saw on some news talk show that a poll was done this last summer before the conventions to find out the populational proportions of registered Dems, Reps, and Independents, and these numbers were compared to earlier ones going back about two decades or more. In that poll, the numbers of Dems and Independents were almost the same, and the number of Republicans was considerably lower.

Romney actually had no coherent position. He said publicly that he would happily sign into law a personhood amendment for zygotes like the one Mississippi voted down in 2011. He said he only supported exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the woman. He said he would get rid of Roe v Wade. He said the issue should go back to the states. Then later said he supported them for rape, incest, and the health and life of the woman, only to be “corrected” by a spokesperson the next day who said he did not support an exception for the health of the woman. And meanwhile, he chose as his running mate Paul “rape is a method of conception” Ryan, who doesn’t believe in exceptions and co-sponsored a federal “human life” bill for personhood for zygotes with Todd “legitimate rape” Akin.

Akin, Mourdock, Smith, Walsh, and various other Congressional GOP candidates made unbelievably ignorant and stupid remarks about rape pregnancy and “there is no such thing as abortion to save the life of the woman,” etc. Why? Because all the anti-abortion people are out of the closet now, saying exactly what they believe in public. The blackmailers of the GOP unchained.

Obama won with overwhelming support from single women, and Akin, Mourdock, Smith, Walsh, and all sort of other anti-abortion candidates have been defeated.

The GOP, you see, created its own problem when it sold its soul. The reason so many GOPers are anti-abortion is because so many pro-choice Republicans just left, a few at a time. The more the blackmailers were unchained, the more extreme their views were found to be, until it was really hard for pro-choice Republicans to go on being Republicans. The GOP can still take some state legislatures, and from there they can gerrymander districts to win House seats, but they cannot win the Senate any more, and the presidency is firmly beyond their reach. Because the blackmailers who took over the party have alienated even decent Republicans, who have to hold their noses to vote for them.

Now, Roe v Wade and Planned Parenthood v Casey contain sections that eloquently state some reasons that the right to choose whether to continue or terminate a pregnancy is a fundamental right – even for those who think that the right to privacy is not the appropriate way to defend it. The truth is that no born person has a right to do to another what blastocysts, embryos, and fetuses do to the women who are pregnant with them, so even personhood for zygotes will never justify using human laws and the police violence that unpins their enforcement to force women to continue pregnancies. One simply has the right to prevent others from controlling their sex organs and immune systems against one’s will, conscience, and freedom of religion, and we all know it except rapists.

What can the GOP do? I said above that Dems and Independents have about the same proportion of the population and Republicans have a lower proportion now. So the sane Republicans should either kick the blackmailing anti-abortion people out of the party or, if they can’t because they’re no longer a majority there, they should walk out on the party and start a third party and call themselves something like “Independent Republicans.”

Frankly, I’d love to see pro-choice Republicans show the guts to do that, and they might well draw a huge percentage of Independents into their new gestalt. But fessing up to what happened over the last 30 years is a necessary precursor to repudiation of the conservative tyranny over female sex organs that has been shamelessly promulgated.

I agree with you. Perhaps there should be a third party of moderate Republicans who are pro choice while espousing smaller government, fewer entitlements, low tax rates etc. It is very difficult for any Republican today that bucks the party and tries to run with pro choice in their platform to gain any financial support or moral support from the party. This then makes fundraising nearly impossible. Thanks for your detailed response. I enjoyed learning from it. Richard

Richard, I live in CA (SF Bay area) and hear what you are saying all the time: if only the GOP would drop opposition to abortion etc … But it doesn’t add up: these same people elect (and reelect) representatives who make drunken sailors look like paragons of fiscal probity. You’d think there would be a fiscal conservative in there somewhere, no? But there isn’t. The same goes for the other lightning rod: illegal immigration. The story there is if only the GOP would agree to “amnesty” etc they’d garner a lot of votes from the so called Hispanic community. But, again, it doesn’t add up: these same people are supporting representatives with virtually nothing in common with the GOP’s other planks. Where is the common ground?

I’d like to hear you elaborate. It doesn’t look to me like these are winning ideas. And yes, I admit I should be put on the endangered species list: a CA conservative.

Hello… I’m a very liberal Democrat and I voted for President Obama. I am a small business owner who is going on his 4th year with only 1 month in the red since I’ve opened. I am not the smartest guy in the world, nor am I the dumbest. Take my comments and maybe learn something from a different point of view or leave them.

This is what I see when I look at the Republican party. Change. In business, either keep up with the movement of the industry or get left behind. I can’t tell you how many right leaning articles, interviews and Facebook posts that said something to the effect of “This is not the America that I know and love! It has changed!”. Well, like it or not, things change. The country is becoming more liberal when it comes to social issues and trying to dig your heels in and not give any ground is like trying to hold back a river with your hands.

Denial of facts. Did you happen to see the Rachel Maddow show that talked about Republicans living in their own “bubble” and refusing to admit to reality? For a Republican I know it will be like trying to drink castor oil, but it sums up my thoughts on this perfectly. http://liberal-agenda.com/2012/11/rachel-maddows-scathing-new-piece-time-for-the-right-to-leave-their-bubble-and-step-into-reality/

Who the heck is running the show? The Tea Party, Glenn Beck, Rush, Michelle Bachmann, Karl Rove, the Koch brothers, Ted Nugent, the NRA, the Mega Churches,… the list goes on and on. As a liberal observer it looks like everyone but the actual candidate is running things. Romney says something during a debate and one of his people issues a statement afterwards saying “Mr. Romney doesn’t really believe what Mr. Romney said during the debate. He actually believes this….” Look, we have Joe Biden. Sometimes he says some kinda funky things, but hey, it’s Joe and he speaks what he actually thinks so don’t correct him.

Voter suppression. We view this as a HUGE problem. Are certain Republicans playing games trying to “fix” things in their favor. If you deny this… go back and watch the Maddow video again.

Compromise. To me, the Republicans are “NO COMPROMISE UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES… OR ELSE!”. I remember learning about our system of government in grade school and that was one thing that really stuck with me all these years. Compromise. How else could my 2 other partners and myself make it this far in business if we didn’t compromise?

So take my comments however you may want. I’m not trying to attack Republicans. Your methods of dealing with financial issues might have some good points that we can build on together. If a hand reaches out to help you back up after defeat… please don’t slap it. Take it and pull yourself back up and work on things as a team. That is the only way we are going to get through the next foreseeable future. Thank you very much for listening. Mike.

Thanks for your response. Your littany of Republican party spokesmen (Tea Party, Glenn Beck etc.) by and large makes me cringe. The Republican party hasn’t always been dominated by such social conservatives. The exception is I do think the Koch brothers are fighting for ecconomic freedom. Anyway, that was what my article tried to express….the intransigence of the “hard right” wing of the party. The tail wags the dog. The majority of Republicans are still moderate like myself and focus on economic issues. Richard

Richard, Loved the article thought it was spot on I years ago stopped voting straight ticket for GOP for what you outlined. The unfortunite issue is that the GOP can get a moderate mid stream candidate through the system because of the primary only or more of the far right proponents vote in the primary.